Recommended Posts

It seems that manufacturing of Intel’s follow-up to its Coffee Lake chips—the 10-nanometer Cannon Lake—is on target. The new CPUs are due to arrive in 2018, but Intel has confirmed that low volumes will be shipping before this year is out.

Intel’s chips have been stuck on the 14-nanometer process since Broadwell was released back in 2014. There have been refinements and optimizations, of course, culminating in the recently released 14nm++ Coffee Lake CPUs, but we’ve been waiting impatiently for the delayed jump to 10-nanometer parts, which were supposed to arrive in 2016.

At the company’s latest earnings call, CEO Brian Krzanich said Intel is “on track to ship our first low-volume 10-nanometer part by the end of the year.” But they're unlikely to make their way into the hands of consumers until production increases in 2018. Krzanich expects “high volume and system availability in the second half of 2018.”

In August, Intel suggested that Cannon Lake will fall under the same 8th-generation Core series umbrella as Kaby Lake Refresh and Coffee Lake. It's Cannon Lake’s follow-up, Ice Lake, that will be the first 9th generation Core chip.

It’s speculated that Canon Lake will be focused on smaller, mobile CPUs that are easier to make when chip yields are poor. The larger Ice Lake desktop processors will arrive once the fabrication process has been improved and refined to 10nm+. Don’t expect to see these until late 2018, or perhaps even 2019, though we'll probably find out more at CES in January.

So... okay. Kaby Lake Refresh is also mobile CPU's and part of the 8th gen series.

The new product, which will be part of our 8th Gen Intel Core family, brings together our high-performing Intel Core H-series processor, second generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) and a custom-to-Intel third-party discrete graphics chip from AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group* – all in a single processor package.

It’s a prime example of hardware and software innovations intersecting to create something amazing that fills a unique market gap. Helping to deliver on our vision for this new class of product, we worked with the team at AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group. In close collaboration, we designed a new semi-custom graphics chip, which means this is also a great example of how we can compete and work together, ultimately delivering innovation that is good for consumers.

“Our collaboration with Intel expands the installed base for AMD Radeon GPUs and brings to market a differentiated solution for high-performance graphics,” said Scott Herkelman, vice president and general manager, AMD Radeon Technologies Group. “Together we are offering gamers and content creators the opportunity to have a thinner-and-lighter PC capable of delivering discrete performance-tier graphics experiences in AAA games and content creation applications. This new semi-custom GPU puts the performance and capabilities of Radeon graphics into the hands of an expanded set of enthusiasts who want the best visual experience possible.”

I... Am... Shocked....

Who of us even thought we would see this is in our lifetime? AMD and Intel collaborating on something! Intel simply aren't a company you can trust. But I hope they're honorable in this case. I hope that AMD thought it through to protect their market and sales, their lawyers plugged every loophole, and their IP is protected.

Vega is less than great in the high-end as we've seen, but shows it can work great in DX12 titles, but where Vega really shines is when it's scaled down to low power performance.

Koduri, 49, joins Intel from AMD, where he most recently served as senior vice president and chief architect of the Radeon Technologies Group. In this role, he was responsible for overseeing all aspects of graphics technologies used in AMD’s APU, discrete GPU, semi-custom and GPU compute products. Prior to AMD, Koduri served as director of graphics architecture at Apple Inc., where he helped establish a leadership graphics sub-system for the Mac product family and led the transition to Retina computer displays.

Koduri will officially start in his new role at Intel in early December.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Intel is now claiming it will "introduce" its first 10nm products by the end of 2017, with serious volumes coming in 2018. Credible leaks have revealed that Intel is targeting availability more in the middle of 2018.

A delay in the mass-production start from the end of 2015 to the end of 2017 is a delay of two years, or roughly a full generation, at least back when an Intel generation was defined as roughly two years.

As if it couldn't get any worse, by Intel's own admission, its first- and second-generation 10nm technologies -- 10nm and 10nm+, respectively -- will offer worse performance than its upcoming 14nm++ technology . Intel says the company's 10nm technology won't open up a clear performance lead over its 14nm++ technology until its third iteration -- known as 10nm++ -- which should go into production sometime in 2020.

Interesting article. I can't seem to get my head around it as Intel are unstoppable, or at least appear to be. Even... how the hell how does a smaller process not increase performance?

Seems like this might be enough of a struggle for them for AMD to catch up and we can have a bit more balance in the market place.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Very interesting article. Curious to see if AMD can come up with something next year with the zen2 that closes the gap some more. Intel's latest releases have been impressive though.

Intel definitely have the best 14nm silicon in the world. They've had plenty of time to get the best out of it after all. And of course Core in its 8th generation... very mature architecture, who knows how many more changes it will see before the next ground up.

It all hangs on 7nm I would say. This is not a licensed product either.. this is all GF, so GF better deliver and not screw it up like the last two process nodes.

The lists we have acquired starts with mobile processors. The key headline here is that Intel will be introducing the Core i9 brand to the mobile space, with one overclockable processor for now.

What our sources do confirm is that all the i7-H and i7-HK processors will be based on Coffee Lake-H hardware, rather than Kaby Lake Refresh. This might be due to the 45W nature of the processors, and it is expected that the i3/i5/i7 naming will follow desktop Coffee Lake core counts, namely that Core i3 will be quad-core, Core i5 will be six-core and Core i7 parts will be six-core with hyperthreading. A Core i9 part in this context is undefined, but I expect it just to be an additional qualifier for a Core i7 mobile processor that is overclockable (hence it’s called an HK).

Intel’s 9th Generation Processors: Coffee Lake Refresh?

So here comes the big unknown. There was no doubt that after the 8th generation there would be a 9th generation, but what exactly it could contain is a mystery. After Coffee Lake, built on Intel’s 14++ process, Intel has announced that the next major platform would be 10+ rather than 10, and they would be limiting 10nm to smaller mobile dies until the process matures. After Coffee Lake-S is supposed to be Ice Lake, speaking in Intel’s Lake cadence, as announced previously. Most arrows we know about point to 10+ being further off from consumer launch, so that offers two potentials here. The 9000 series processors could be a refresh of Coffee Lake, with some additional features, making it the second set of 14++ processors. Or it could be the names of the 10+ parts. Speculation at this point, for sure.

Edited November 25, 2017 by SceptreCore

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

This seems like a long time on the same basic architecture. If they're having issues with manufacturing quality, it also seems like it'd be a good time to get a lot of work done on the replacement architecture.

Or at this point are 8/9/10th gen different enough to first gen core, that it's really just branding?

1

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

This seems like a long time on the same basic architecture. If they're having issues with manufacturing quality, it also seems like it'd be a good time to get a lot of work done on the replacement architecture.

Or at this point are 8/9/10th gen different enough to first gen core, that it's really just branding?

The increase in performance really has been just marginal, especially from Haswell. Sandy Bridge was a significant step forward.

I think Intel really kinda dropped the ball here. Complacency sets in easily there... they felt comfortable enough with no competition to string out the generations and processes. But they really should have launched 10nm and worked on improving it more years ago, but they probably wanted to stretch the road map out as they see nodes coming to a halt, and maintain marketplace control.

Then AMD gets Jim Keller back... he gets them to long jump back in the race, and set them on an aggressive upgrade path. It's all good for the consumer.

Link to post

Share on other sites

"You heard that right, according to the AIDA64 changelog the i9 series are coming to notebooks.

The latest beta of AIDA64 Extreme apparently can identify yet unreleased i7 and i9-8000H series processors. Just three months ago CoffeeLake H series featuring 6-core and 12 thread processors were leaked through Geekbench database, so we know they are coming, we just don’t know when. We also didn’t know about the mobile i9 series.

In fact, changelog even lists Core i9-8950HK processor, which may be the Intel’s flagship mobile processor.

Interestingly the list also features desktop processors such as i3-9300, i5-9400, i5-9400T, i5-9600 and i5-9600K. Isn’t it too early for i5-8600K replacement?

Update: We were told that the SKU names listed in the changelog were defined by Intel themselves. It does not mean they are coming soon, but Intel usually does not list them so early."

"Based on the recent Intel leaks, Chinese sources are further reporting through information acquired from motherboard makers in Taiwan that Intel’s next generation, 9th generation flagship will pack more cores than the current fastest mainstream processor.

There was no doubt that Intel’s 9th generation mainstream processors weren’t going to receive a core bump in the coming year. There were leaked slides already hinting that and next year means Intel will be getting enough time to tweak their process and architecture design to accommodate more cores.

Straight from HKEPC, who were able to get information out of Taiwan motherboard makers, it has been rumored that the 9th generation flagship which will be known as the Intel Core i7-9700K, will pack 8 cores and 16 threads. There’s no mention of what process technology the new processors will be utilizing but I believe it’s an updated version of the current 14nm++ process.

According to the same source, Intel’s next generation Core i5 chips will be packing a 6 core and 12 thread design. Currently, all Intel Core i5 series chips come with 6 cores and 6 threads while the i7 lineup features 6 cores and 12 threads. The Core i3 series on the other hand will be getting multi-threading support too which means we are looking at 4 cores and 8 threads compared to 4 cores and 4 threads that are available on Coffee Lake Core i3 chips right now."

Coffee Lake just launched and it's successor is already being outed? Will it be Coffee Lake Refresh? I seriously cannot keep up with all the things Intel does. Clearly they don't want to be behind again when Ryzen 2 launches. Would still be on Kaby Lake were it not for Ryzen. Also, anyone who invested in a Z370 motherboard... that board just became mainstream as the Z390 chipset will be the only one to support 8 core variants, or what will become the top end i7. I would be pretty annoyed

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

"Intel Whiskey Lake is a codename for upcoming Intel chips that will be replacing Intel Kaby Lake refresh chips. While there is little that we know about these upcoming CPU we are going to tell you all that we currently know about Intel Whiskey Lake and what has been rumored and speculated regarding these processors.

Kaby Lake CPUs featured 2 cores but the refresh features 4 rather than 2 which means additional performance and more multi-threaded performance. These chips are meant for notebooks as are the upcoming Intel Whiskey Lake CPUs. Intel has been the dominating force in the market for some time but much has changed since AMD Ryzen came out and Intel now has to introduce new products in order to keep up.

According to the leak, Intel Whiskey Lake will be coming out in the second half of 2018. What we know from the leak is that Intel Whiskey Lake will feature 6 cores in total, 2 cores will be CPU cores while 2 additional graphics cores will also be present."